purchased, "the trouble with you is that
you insist on being smart. You mind more
about your clothes and your moustaches
and how you look and what you wear than
comfort. Now comfort is really the great
thing. Once you've passed, say, fifty,
comfort is the only thing that matters."
"Madame, chere Madame, I do not
know that I agree with you."
"Well, you'd better," said Mrs. Oliver.
"If not, you will suffer a great deal, and it
will be worse year after year."
Mrs. Oliver fished a gaily covered box
from its paper bag. Removing the lids of
this, she picked up a small portion of its
contents and transferred it to her mouth.
She then licked her fingers, wiped them
on a handkerchief, and murmured, rather
indistinctly:
"Sticky."
"Do you no longer eat apples? I have
always seen you with a bag of apples in
your hand, or eating them, or on occasions
the bag breaks and they tumble out on the
road."
"I told you," said Mrs. Oliver, "I told
you that I never want to see an apple
287
again. No. I hate apples. I suppose I shall
get over it some day and eat them again,
but—well, I don't like the associations of
apples."
"And what is it that you eat now?"
Poirot picked up the gaily coloured lid
decorated with a picture of a palm tree.
"Tunis dates," he read. "Ah, dates now."
"That's right," said Mrs. Oliver.
"Dates."
She took another date and put it in her
mouth, removed a stone which she threw
into a bush and continued to munch.
"Dates," said Poirot. "It is
extraordinary."
"What is extraordinary about eating
dates? People do."
"No, no, I do not mean that. Not eating
them. It is extraordinary that you should
say to me like that—dates."
"Why?" asked Mrs. Oliver.
"Because," said Poirot, "again and
again you indicate to me the path, the how
do you say, the chemin that I should take
or that I should have already taken. You
show me the way that I should go. Dates.
Till this moment I did not realise how
important dates were."
288
"I can't see that dates have anything to
do with what's happened here. I mean, there's no real time involved. The whole
thing took place what--only five days
ago."
"That event took place four days ago.
Yes, that is very true. But to everything
that happens there has to be a past. A past
which is by now incorporated in today, but which existed yesterday or last month
or last year. The present is nearly always
rooted in the past. A year, two years, perhaps even three years ago, a murder
was committed. A child saw that murder.
Because that child saw that murder on a
certain date now long gone by, that child
died four days ago. Is not that so?"
"Yes. That's so. At least, I suppose it
is. It mightn't have been at all. It might
be just some mentally disturbed nut who
likes killing people and whose idea of
playing with water is to push somebody's
head under it and hold it there. It might
have been described as a mental delinquent's
bit of fun at a party."
"It was not that belief that brought you
to me, Madame."
"No," said Mrs. Oliver, "no, it wasn't.
289
I didn't like the feel of things. I still don't
like the feel of things."
"And I agree with you. I think you are
quite right. If one does not like the feel of
things, one must learn why. I am trying
very hard, though you may not think so, to learn why."
"By going around and talking to people, finding out if they are nice or not and then
asking them questions?"
"Exactly."
"And what have you leamt?"
"Facts," said Poirot. "Facts which will
have in due course to be anchored in their
place by dates, shall we say."
"Is that all? What else have you learnt?"
"That nobody believes in the veracity of
Joyce Reynolds."
"When she said she saw someone killed?
But I heard her."
"Yes, she said it. But nobody believes
it is true. The probability is, therefore, that it was not true. That she saw no such
thing."
"It seems to me," said Mrs. Oliver, "as
though your facts were leading you backwards
instead of remaining on the spot or
going forward."
290
"Things have to be made to accord.
Take forgery, for instance. The fact of
forgery. Everybody says that a foreign girl,
the au pair girl, so endeared herself to an
elderly and very rich widow that that rich
widow left a Will, or a codicil to a Will,
leaving all her money to this girl. Did the
girl forge that Will or did somebody else
forge it?"
"Who else could have forged it?"
"There was another forger in this
village. Someone, that is, who had once
been accused of forgery but had got off
lightly as a first offender and with
extenuating circumstances."
"Is that a new character? One I know?"
"No, you do not know him. He is
dead."
"Oh? When did he die?"
"About two years ago. The exact date I
do not as yet know. But I shall have to
know. He is someone who had practised
forgery and who lived in this place. And
because of a little what you might call girl
trouble arousing jealousy and various
emotions, he was knifed one night and
died. I have the idea, you see, that a lot
of separated incidents might tie up more
291
closely than anyone has thought. Not all
of them. Probably not all of them, but
several of them."
"It sounds interesting," said Mrs.
Oliver, "but I can't see—"
"Nor can I as yet," said Poirot. "But I
think dates might help. Dates of certain
happenings, where people were, what
happened to them, what they were doing.
Everybody thinks that the foreign girl
forged the Will and probably," said
Poirot, "everybody was right. She was the
one to gain by it, was she not? Wait—
wait—"
"Wait for what?" said Mrs. Oliver.
"An idea that passed through my head,"
said Poirot.
Mrs. Oliver sighed and took another
date.
"You return to London, Madame? Or
are you making a long stay here?"
"Day after to-morrow," said Mrs.
Oliver. "I can't stay any longer. I've got a
good many things cropping up."
"Tell me, now—in your flat, your
house, I cannot remember which it is now,
you have moved so
many times lately,
there is room there to have guests?"
292
"I never admit that there is," said Mrs.
Oliver. "If you ever admit that you've got
a free guest room in London, you've asked
for it. All your friends, and not only your
friends, your acquaintances or indeed your
acquaintances' third cousins sometimes, write you letters and say would you mind
just putting them up for a night. Well, I
do mind. What with sheets and laundry, pillow cases and wanting early morning tea
and very often expecting meals served to
them, people come. So I don't let on that
I have got an available spare room. My friends come and stay with me. The
people I really want to see, but the others
--no, I'm not helpful. I don't like just
being made use of."
"Who does?" said Hercule Poirot. "You
are very wise."
"And anyway, what's all this about?"
"You could put up one or two guests, if
need arose?"
"I could," said Mrs. Oliver. "Who do
you want me to put up? Not you yourself.
You've got a splendid flat of your own.
Ultra modern, very abstract, all squares
and cubes."
293
"It is just that there might be a wise
precaution to take."
"For whom? Somebody else going to be
killed?"
"I trust and pray not, but it might be
within the bounds of possibility."
"But who? Who? I can't understand."
"How well do you know your friend?"
"Know her? Not well. I mean, we liked each other on a cruise and got in the habit
of pairing off together. There was something--what
shall I say?--exciting about
her. Different."
"Did you think you might put her in a
book some day?"
"I do hate that phrase being used.
Poeple are always saying it to me and it's
not true. Not really. I don't put people in
books. People I meet, people I know."
"It is perhaps not true to say, Madame, that you do put people in books sometimes?
People that you meet, but not, I
agree, people that you know. There would
be no fun in that."
"You're quite right," said Mrs. Oliver.
"You're really rather good at guessing
things sometimes. It does happen that
way. I mean, you see a fat woman sitting
294
in a bus eating a currant bun and her lips
are moving as well as eating, and you can
see she's either saying something to
someone or thinking up a telephone call
that she's going to make, or perhaps a
letter she's going to write. And you look
at her and you study her shoes and the
skirt she's got on and her hat and guess
her age and whether she's got a wedding
ring on and a few other things. And then
you get out of the bus. You don't want
ever to see her again, but you've got a
story in your mind about somebody called
Mrs. Carnaby who is going home in a bus, having had a very strange interview, somewhere
where she saw someone in a pastry
cook's and was reminded of someone she'd
only met once and who she had heard was
dead and apparently isn't dead. Dear me,"
said Mrs. Oliver, pausing for breath. "You
know, it's quite true. I did sit across from
someone in a bus just before I left
London, and here it is all working out
beautifully inside my head. I shall have the
whole story soon. The whole sequence, what she's going back to say, whether it'll
run her into danger or somebody else into
danger. I think I even know her name.
295
Her name's Constance. Constance Carnaby.
There's only one thing would ruin
it."
"And what is that?"
"Well, I mean, if I met her again in
another bus, or spoke to her or she talked
to me or I began to know something about
her. That would ruin everything, of
course."
"Yes, yes. The story must be yours, the
character is yours. She is your child. You
have made her, you begin to understand
her, you know how she feels, you know
where she lives and you know what she
does. But that all started with a real, live
human being and if you found out what
the real live human being was like—well
then, there would be no story, would
there?"
"Right again," said Mrs. Oliver. "As to
what you were saying about Judith, I think
that is true. I mean, we were together a
lot on the cruise, and we went to see the
places but I didn't really get to know her
particularly well. She's a widow, and her
husband died and she was left badly off
with one child, Miranda, whom you've
seen. And it's true that I've got rather a
296
funny feeling about them. A feeling as
though they mattered, as though they're
mixed up in some interesting drama. I
don't want to know what the drama is. I
don't want them to tell me. I want to think
of the sort of drama I would like them to
be in."
"Yes. Yes, I can see that they are—well,
candidates for inclusion for another best
seller by Ariadne Oliver."
"You really are a beast sometimes," said
Mrs. Oliver. "You make it all sound
so vulgar." She paused thoughtfully.
"Perhaps it is."
"No, no, it is not vulgar. It is just
human."
"And you want me to invite Judith and
Miranda to my flat or house in London?"
"Not yet," said Poirot. "Not yet until I
am sure that one of my little ideas might
be right."
"You and your little ideas! Now I've got
a piece of news for you."
"Madame, you delight me."
"Don't be too sure. It will probably
upset your ideas. Supposing I tell you that
the forgery you have been so busy talking
about wasn't a forgery at all."
HP20 297
"What is that you say?"
"Mrs. Ap Jones Smythe, or whatever
her name is, did make a codicil to her Will leaving all her money to the au pair girl and she signed it, and two witnesses saw
her sign it, and signed it also in the presence
of each other. Put that in your
moustache and smoke it."
298
19
^•JL yTRS.—LEAMAN—" said Poirot,
|/| writing down the name.
±VJL "That's right. Harriet Leaman.
And the other witness seems to have
been a James Jenkins. Last heard of going
to Australia. And Miss Olga Seminoff
seems to have been last heard of returning
to Czechoslovakia, or wherever she came
from. Everybody seems to have gone
somewhere else."
"How reliable do you think this Mrs.
Leaman is?"
"I don't think she made it all up, if
that's what you mean. I think she sign
ed
something, that she was curious about it,
and that she took the first opportunity she
had of finding out what she'd signed."
"She can read and write?"
"I suppose so. But I agree that people
aren't very good, sometimes, at reading
old ladies' handwriting, which is very
spiky and very hard to read. If there were
any rumours flying about later, about this
299
Will or codicil, she might have thought
that that was what she'd read in this rather
undecipherable handwriting."
"A genuine document," said Poirot.
"But there was also a forged codicil."
"Who says so?"
"Lawyers."
"Perhaps it wasn't forged at all."
"Lawyers are very particular about these
matters. They were prepared to come into
court with expert witnesses."
"Oh well," said Mrs. Oliver, "then it's
easy to see what must have happened, isn't
it?"
"What is easy? What happened?"
"Well, of course, the next day or a few
days later, or even as much as a week later,
Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe either had a bit of
a tiff with her devoted au pair attendant,
or she had a delicious reconciliation with
her nephew, Hugo, or her niece, Rowena,
and she tore up the Will or scratched out
the codicil or something like that, or burnt
the whole thing."
"And after that?"
"Well, after that, I suppose, Mrs.
Llewellyn-Smythe dies, and the girl seizes
her chance and writes a new codicil in
300
roughly the same terms in as near to Mrs.
Llewellyn-Smythe's handwriting as she
can, and the two witnessing signatures as
near as she can. She probably knows Mrs.
Leaman's writing quite well. It would be
on national health cards or something like
that, and she produces it, thinking that
someone will agree to having witnessed the
Will and that all would be well. But her
forgery isnt good enough and so trouble
starts."
"Will you permit me, chere Madame, to
use your telephone?"
"I will permit you to use Judith Butler's
telephone, yes."
"Where is your friend?"
"Oh, she's gone to get her hair done.
And Miranda has gone for a walk. Go on,
it's in the room through the window
there."
Poirot went in and returned about ten
minutes later.
"Well? What have you been doing?"
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